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Ackman And Valeant Prepare Unusual Hostile Bid For Maker Of Botox

Professor Ronald Gilson weighs in on the aggressive business practices being pursued by Wall Street businessmen for The New York Times.

Activist investors are exerting ever more influence on corporate America, pressing companies to cut costs, replace executives and strike deals. On Monday, William A. Ackman, among the brashest men on Wall Street, made perhaps the boldest move yet for an activist.

By teaming up with Valeant, a big health care company, and offering to buy Allergan, the maker of Botox, for roughly $50 billion, Mr. Ackman has once again found an audacious way to pursue his agenda.

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“This is a harbinger of a much wider range of kinds of deals,” said Ronald J. Gilson, a professor of business law at Stanford Law School. “There are a lot of people with a lot of money who can act very quickly, and they don’t have to do things that look like last week’s deal.”